Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is essentially a 'best-of' version of the popular fighting franchise that stretches back to the early days of the PlayStation. Joining 50 characters from across the franchise's history are several new modes, including an extensive training suite and a premium online service.

Those familiar with the early Tekken games should feel right at home with Tag Tournament 2, with practically every character - from Alex to Armour King, Devil Jin, Yoshimitsu and Christie Monteiro - available from day one, with more to be added as free downloadable content after release.

Alongside the two-versus-two tag rules seen in the original Tekken Tag Tournament and the usual Arcade, Time Attack and Survival modes are a smattering of new features exclusive to consoles.

Perhaps the most interesting addition to Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is the Fight Lab, which combines the series' flair for whacky, addictive mini-games and a comprehensive tutorial into one mode.

You're given a robot character named Combot, a blank slate that you can customise with moves from other characters. As you complete mini-games you earn development points, which can be used to buy new attacks. While every move in the game won't be available, several hundred of the most balanced and distinctive offerings will be up for purchase.

It's also designed to serve higher level play, too, with the more powerful attacks locked until you've achieved S ranks of mini-games, and a single run through of Fight Lab will only provide enough points to unlock 30 or so moves, providing sufficient incentive to keep playing.

You're also able to take your own Combot outside of the Fight Lab, giving you a custom and unpredictable character to use against other players.

Tekken Tunes customise your experience

Meanwhile, a number of features were revealed at gamescom that aim to augment the experience in a number of ways. First up is Tekken Tunes, allowing you to freely swap music around the game. Think one stage's theme is better suited for the battle selection screen, for example? Simply swap them around.

As well as in-game libraries, you can import your own tracks located on the console dashboard. Game director Katsuhiro Harada wants players to be creative with this feature, joking that you can record your voice and have it play as the final stage takes place, telling your children to stop playing so late and go to sleep.

Meanwhile, post-release you can expect tracks from classic Tekken games to be available to purchase and attached to stages of your choosing.

There's 3D support for both Xbox 360 and PS3, touted as a first for a fighter on both systems. While it does give you that extra added perspective, it does come at the cost of a halved frame rate, which the recent 3DS version managed to avoid.

Finally there's the Tekken World Federation, a premium online service in the same ilk as Modern Warfare 3's Call of Duty Elite and Battlefield 3's Battlefield Premium. It's a first for a fighting game, and essentially collects extensive amounts of online play data and displays it in a format that's easy to analyse and compare in a web browser.

Not only will it help players improve their own game and snoop on other players as they prepare for tournaments, but it'll help provide extra value after release.

Namco Bandai is planning weekly challenges, for example tasking players to notch up a certain amount of juggles, which rewards you with points that can be spent in an online store, and the game's achievements will be expanded with the service's own selection of unlockables for bonus items.

And like other online-heavy titles, players can create and join teams which can host more users and provide more bonus unlocks as your team's performance and rank increases.

While accessing all the features in Tekken World Federation will come at a cost, specific pricing and whether anything is available for free is still unknown, as well as the final list of features, including support for a dedicated mobile app.

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 has all the ingredients to be the greatest Tekken game yet, with an all-encompassing roster and unique training mode to ensure returning fans can come back with ease, and a suite of online options to keep series die-hards scrapping sometime after its release next month.

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 will be released for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on September 11 in North America and September 14 in Europe.